Lamar Smith (activist)

Lamar Smith (1892-13 August 1955) was a World War I veteran from Mississippi and an activist for the Civil Rights movement until his 1955 murder.

Biography
Lamar Smith served in the US Army during World War I before becoming a farmer in Mississippi and a voting rights activist with the Civil Rights movement. Smith pushed for African-American voters to use absentee ballots so that they would not be subjected to violence at the polls, and he met up with several other blacks at the Brookhaven courthouse to help them with filling out the ballots at 10:00 AM on 13 August 1955. While there, Smith was shot dead by a white man, who managed to escape without being identified or arrested.